… in practical terms it’s because “crew” is much easier to replace—whereas if you fire somebody like Harrelson your whole movie might go away
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To some extent, it’s in their financial interest to protect him from himself. If he’s unvaccinated or hasn’t kept up with his vaccinations, they could lose his services for months if he gets COVID.
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The problem is we put these actors so high on a pedestal and pay them absurd amounts of money that they start to believe they are above us.
They need to be knocked down several pegs.
Nobody is that important.
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Had to sit in a car service center waiting room for 3 hours today (long boring story). Not only was I the only one wearing a mask, but almost everyone coughed repeatedly, and no one even bothered to cover their mouth when that happened.
We are doomed.
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At the doctor’s office yesterday. Overheard the nurse talking about how sick she had recently been, not clear to me from what. Also overheard her coughing badly. She was wearing a mask, but not N-95, just surgical, and she often pulled it down to talk to people.
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We had to take one of the kitty’s to the vet a few days ago. They’re done with covid as well. Only one staff member had on a mask and I was the only kitty daddy wearing one.
Our other vet, a neurologist, still takes it seriously, you call when you arrive and you must wear a mask at all times. The staff also wear masks at all times.
On the plus side the non masking vet had excellent air quality. I carry a CO2 monitor and their air was well within the lots of fresh air zone.
If anyone is interested, I did the research, this is the highest rated portable monitor. It’s a little bigger than an old school pager and it fits in phone case clipped to your belt. I leave it in the case and just check the app on my phone so no one knows I’m goofy.
Batteries last 4 years and it keeps 7 days data. I have mine set to refresh every minute.
It was 250 bucks but it sure helps with anxiety and making decisions.
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… “we” 
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Society.
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Another confirmation that it’s every person for themselves.
“As the pandemic continues to shift from an acute public health crisis to a personal health responsibility, MSU no longer will require the COVID-19 vaccination for students, staff and faculty, effective today,”
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In the case of the population study, “It appears that, regardless of gender and other demographic factors, COVID-19 infection at baseline is correlated with increased problems with emotion regulation six months later: depression, anxiety and agitation. In some cases, we are talking about symptom levels that are at or above recommended as cut-off scores for psychiatric diagnoses,” Hall said.
The studies were conducted during earlier waves of the pandemic. The researchers did not examine whether Omicron and later variants have the same effects on the brain as earlier variants.
“Our two studies, using very different methods, highlight the need to understand the full range of harms of COVID-19 illness,” Hall said.
“We still need to know more about how factors like vaccination affect the course of long COVID. We also need to know about how some physical conditions like diabetes, obesity and hypertension might impact these mechanisms and outcomes.”
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How can anyone make these arguments with a straight face or how can anyone listen to them and not say STFU?
Rep. Jodee Etchart, R-Billings, who requested the bill, asked sponsor Kmetz if he had considered establishing a system of two banks of blood, one vaccinated and one unvaccinated. Etchart had worked with Kmetz to bring forward legislation about COVID and the blood supply.
“I’m one of many who believe in the God given right of medical freedom, which is having access to genetically unmodified blood during a time of need,” said Jo Vilhauer from Miles City. “This is a vital part of health autonomy.”
Dr. Christine Drivdahl-Smith, a physician who is no longer practicing for whatever reason, claimed that the vaccine could cause Mad Cow Disease, which it very notably cannot do, at all, for any reason.
Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, vice-chairwoman of the House Human Services committee, was also a supporter of the bill and not only shared nonsense promoted in Died Suddenly, but also shared that her brother, a mortician, noticed a “blood flow” problem in his vaccinated patients. All of whom are dead.
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I think this is a good take on the latest mask study that everyone is using to say masks definitely don’t work. This explains why that study can not make that definitive statement.
Scroll past the lab leak theory to get to the mask stuff unless you like to read about that debate.
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But the cochrane review doesn’t make that statement. It does, however, say that more and better RCTs should be done to get better data, and I’m kinda amazed how much pushback there is to that idea.
Here’s the final line of the report:
Here’s the review if anyone wants to read it.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
If there is a proven benefit of a preventative action, even if it is poorly quantified, it can be unethical to do a randomized trial where the known likely outcome is higher morbidity/mortality in the control group.
Example: there are no large randomized studies that establish the benefit of pacemakers in patients with severe bradycardia, because it would be unethical to assign patients to the control group so that they can die for science.
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As noted in this review, there have been studies in hospitals that compared infection rates when physicians and staff were given surgical masks vs. N95s. Clearly in controlled labratory settings the N95s are superior, but the real-world use didn’t show a statistically significant difference between the two in the timeframes and settings being tested, probably because few people are really good about being vigilant wearing a well-fitted N95 day in and day out for months. To me, that sounds like useful data for heath providers when they’re deciding how to allocate scarce resources, especially when N95s are hard to get.
Which is a point I’ve made about a dozen times in this thread and its predecessors.
What I was responding to was the assertion that more randomized trials need to be done on masks vs no masks. That’s a hard no.
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There have been some large scale “studies in nature” comparing areas that had mask mandates vs no mandates, clearly showing lower infection with mandates. Not by any means RCT’s, but probably as close as we will get. At this point, the issue is too polluted with extreme right-wing politics to ever have meaningful, actionable, acceptable data.
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Right, but according to the Marges of the world, the right wing loons, and everybody on my local Facebook and Nextdoor groups, it does mean the government lied to us in order to control us and tricked us into wearing masks when they knew all along masks don’t work.
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Of course, if the review unambiguously stated that masks work, those paranoid numpties would decry it as fake news and propaganda from Big Mask and evil government.
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